The Church (Paperback)

by Hans Kung (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Provides a picture of the Church's theological image as expressed in the historical forms it has taken through the centuries from the present day back to its origins. The book uncovers, for both Protestant and Roman Catholic, some lessons about the community to which he or she belongs.

Language Notes
Text: English, German (translation) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 526 pages
• Publisher: Continuum (March 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0860121992
• ISBN-13: 978-0860121992
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #285,657 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Church- A Customer Review, November 23, 2005

By	Ryan Buesnel "Ryan" (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Church (Hardcover)

It's amazing how a book first released in 1968 can still be relevant to todays Church. This work is a systematic approach to the ecclesiological and eschatological structures of the Catholic and Protestant Church.Hans Kung is an engaging writer who treats each subject with care and meticulous scholarly research. Protestant readers should not be put off by Kungs Catholic background, as Kung is fair and insightful in his critique of both Church traditions.

Although 'The Church' is a scholarly publication written by one of the most innovative and clever theologians in modern history, 'The Church' is remarkable engaging and easy to read, despite its considerable length. This book is suited to both Church leaders and the layperson who are seeking a concise study of the nature and purpose of the Church.

5.0 out of 5 stars When Shame Drove Men To Dream New Dreams, September 26, 2008

By	Thomas J. Burns (Apopka, Florida USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Church (Hardcover)

There is no denying that "The Church" is a child of its time. Released in 1967 just two years after Vatican II, this signature work of Hans Kung was succeeded by a string of critical and controversial ecclesiastical works by its author. In the years immediately succeeding its publication, "The Church" played its role in the anguished debate over the very nature of Catholicism in the postmodern world.

But this is now over four decades in the past. Those who used this text in ecclesial and university battles are now for the most part long retired or even deceased. Battle lines are still drawn, but the map looks strangely different. The question that remains now is whether removed from its post-conciliar setting, "The Church" has an enduring value, something to say that remains fresh in the contemporary setting.

I finished rereading this book almost a year ago, and I wrestled with that thought myself until I came across the excellent collection of essays entitled "Vatican II: Did Anything Happen?" [2007] This is a wonderful and spirited defense of the necessity of the Council. It was inspired, I believe, by a tendency in the Vatican today to act and speak as if the great Council was a momentary blip that changed little. In point of fact, however, Vatican II was a moral necessity, given that Roman Catholicism and its sister communions had been utterly powerless in the face of the grotesque evils of two world wars and the Holocaust.

Kung's work, like that of other war generation Catholic theologians of Western Europe, is a vision of a Church that indeed would have the moral credibility of character before the powers of this world. There is some striking similarity between Kung's methodology and that of Karl Barth several decades earlier; both define contemporary Christian experience as the outflow of the arrival of the Reign of God. The Church is nothing more and nothing less than the community of those who accept the Reign of God and gather to celebrate this wondrous overturning of history. Membership in the Reign of God is a dramatic, life altering decision. As Kung himself would remark in a later work, Christianity is the only world religion that calls its members to become like unto God.

Kung's sources for the nature, mission, and structure of the Church are primarily scriptural, though as we shall see, Kung's use of the New Testament in particular is at times eccentric. It is not that he did not have other sources, for it is easy to forget over time that Kung was as thorough a scholastic as Karl Rahner, and his footnotes are as multiple and sweeping as those of the Theological Investigations of Father Rahner himself. It is also a reflection of that time that, if memory serves me correctly, English references are rare and American references nonexistent.

Kung finds the New Testament not only a Rosetta Stone for deciphering the Kingdom, but also a kind of family history of the Reign's organic unfolding. He tends to contrast the freedom of the Pauline churches to experience the Holy Spirit in charismatic and unstructured ways, against the churches of the so-called Pastoral Letters where history and lines of authority are more clearly defined. While he can hardly deny the validity of such developments, clearly Kung wishes that there was room today for the Pauline vision of ecclesiology.

Certainly an area of particular interest is the papacy. Kung examines Matthew 16 in contrast to Matthew 18. Both speak of the authority of the reign of God to forgive sin, though in the former chapter this power is personified in Peter, while in the latter the forgiving authority is a broader family power. Kung, of course, has never made a secret of his concern over papal centralization. In this work, he does allow that the historic Apostolic Succession has in its own way been a blessing for the Church, but I would not exactly call it a ringing endorsement, either.

It hardly needs to be said that Kung's is a utopian view of the Church, but then one could say that the Vatican II documents themselves talk about the Church in this way. It may be that this radical freshness and pristine purity found in much of the Council's official language stands as a stark contrast to what actually was then and is now. There is much to the arguments of O'Malley, Schloesser, Komonchak and Ormerod in last year's publication cited above that the Church, almost unconsciously, must in this present day seek to minimize Vatican II as just another of the twenty-one councils to avoid a profound institutional schizophrenia.

The graves of the millions who died in the 20th century carnage are witness to the fact that no church council of that century could ever be seen as "business as usual." This, I think, is what those with long memories understand as the "Spirit of Vatican II" (a term, sadly, hijacked by the Council's enemies unhappy with parochial excesses.) It is the mind frame of the post-World War II era that brings such an edge to the writings of Kung, including our work at hand. It is the reason why "The Church" needs to remain on bookshelves, so that future generations will remember a day when the Church, its bishops and its theologians, came together in collective shame and guilt but nurtured by a pontiff of extraordinary hope and determination, to begin again at square one. Hans Kung and other participants of the Council did not seek to dismantle the Church but to rediscover it. "The Church" remains as one of the critical road maps of their quest...and hopefully, of ours.